Last day of August

Not much to write about this week.  Have been invaded at work by our techs, vendors and our two merchandisers for the deli/bakery.  They are rearranging everything and adding new products.  They were stressing me out.  Too many chiefs and not enough indians. They were stressing out my employees also.  Boring week otherwise.

Squirrels, pumpkins and crazy dogs

My dog Holly can not stand squirrels. The sight of one turns her into a barking crazy dog frenzy.  The squirrel above seemed to love tormenting her.  He got a whole ear of corn from the field next to us and took it up to this branch right outside my kitchen window.  Of course Holly went bonkers and was having a barking fit right under my computer desk.  I know he could hear her barking as he kept looking at her and ignoring her.  I finally had to send her to her crate to calm down and wait for rotten Mr. Squirrel to clear out.  This is Holly.  It's very hard to get a good picture of her because she is always underfoot.

This is Jazzy (Jasmine).  She doesn't go crazy and bark at the squirrels.  She goes crazy and barks at Holly barking at stuff.  She also thinks she is a chihuahua and want to sit in your lap all day.  She doesn't fit.

I am taking a trying a new medication to help with the grouchiness and the mood swings.  It is supposed to take a few weeks to build up in your system but I think I am feeling somewhat better already. If its a placebo effect, who cares.  I feel better. I Haven't felt like going off into a crying jag for no reason most of this week.

I now have 3 pumpkin bumps.  One on the regular pumpkins and two on the jumbo vines.  The largest is about the size of an eggplant.  They may make it yet.

Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day.  I have way too much crammed into tomorrow.

Humpday

Its Wednesday and here I am.I know Wednesday is called hump day for a lot of people it means that the week is half over, they are on the downhill side of a work week.  How many people actually work a nine to five, Monday to Friday work week anymore.  Unless you work in an office I'm thinking that that concept went out in the fifties.  People are all working all different shifts and have many days off in the middle of the week and are working on Saturday and Sunday and overnight.  It kind of aggravates me when reading magazines that say get out of work early on Friday and give yourself a long weekend.  Or talk about taking a little longer lunch on a stressful day to sooth out.  They obviously don't have a clue that the majority of their readers do no have that kind of lifestyle, work environment or schedule.  Even the radio announcers talk about hump day and the work week being half done.  No it isn't. Sorry.  Told you last time that I'm grouchy.

I have poison ivy again.  Third time this year.  I really don't think its actually poison ivy since all I've done is work in my flowerbeds.  I think its just something that my skin is sensitive to and makes me break out like poison ivy.I spent all last Sunday working outside since it was such a nice cool day for a change.  We've had such a string of scorchers.

I went to make a spice cake for tomorrow and forgot to spray the pan for the first layer.  It did not work well.  So we have a single layer spice cake for tomorrows dessert .Rhonda and Brian are coming over here tomorrow for our 25th anniversary.

In a Funk

OK. Lets try this again. I wrote this entire post out last night and blogger lost all but the first sentence.  So here we go again. 
I know its been a while since Ive posted. I haven't been in the greatest of moods.  There were four of us from my company that were going through cancer treatments the last year and a half. Two of us with breast cancer, one with an extremely rare form of cancer that is untreatable, and another bakery manager who had leukemia.  She had a liver transplant last year.  She developed a massive infection and just couldn't fight it.  She died a couple of weeks ago.  The pill I take has some nasty side effects including grouchiness and depression.  I am always irritable and my mood swings are horrible.  Sometimes I just want to cry for no reason. I don't think I'm depressed. I'm just pissed off at everyone and everything.Well that's enough griping.

I plant pumpkins every year and usually do OK with them. I have enough for fall decorations and Halloween and such.  I usually just throw the seed out and let the pumpkins do their thing.  This year I decided to try growing some jumbo pumpkins also.  This year I put them in some really good dirt and Ive been giving them plant food.  Since it has been so hot I have also been watering them quite frequently.  Out of 8 vines, 6 jumbo and two regular, I just now got a pumpkin bump on one of the jumbo vines.   Lots of blooms but no pumpkins.  Is this a bad year for them or what? The little pumpkin isn't even the size of a golf ball yet.

I'm going to try and post more regularly.  Since I am always off on Wednesday I'm going to try and at least post then every week.

Graduation

Last Wednesday my youngest Ashley graduated from Rogers beauty school.  She got a job on Friday at Borics salon.  My parents and my sister and brother-in-law came down for the day also.

This is the cake I made for her.  It didn't survive the trip over to the school.  It was hot and the air does not work in my car.  The icing started to melt and the borders started to roll.  She said she wanted lots of pink so that's what she got.

Frustration at work is getting worst.  I received my hours and sales projections for the next quarter.  They took 32 hours a week away from my dept.  Of course they are still expecting the sales to be just as high or higher.  I am becoming more and more stressed.  Then I found out that a deli/bakery manager from another store had put her notice in and was taking another job.  They gave her a dollar an hour raise to keep her from leaving.  She is making the same as me now.  She hasn't been with the company even two yrs.  Ive been there for 14 and haven't received a raise in over 5 yrs.  I was told that Houchins thought we were making too much already.  I am mad.  I know that she could use the money but it seems they reward those who don't deserve it and the ones who have paid their dues get nothing.  I keep making less and less every year as everything else goes up but my pay.  I feel like a tube of toothpaste.  They have squeezed all they can get out of me.

Last Day of 46

Tomorrow I turn 47. Some days I feel like Methuselahs grandma and other days I feel like I should still be in my teens.  Last Friday night Alan and I went over to Rhonda and Brian's house.This is Rhonda.  She is my best friend in the world and our schedules are so insane we never get to see each other.  Fri we couldn't even meet til 8:00 pm.  I'm used to getting up at 4 or 5 am so I am usually conking out on the couch by 9.  We had a great time eating Pizza and watching a couple of movies. Dogma and Letters to Juliet.  We didn't head home til 1 in the morning.  Been a long time since I was out at that time.  I forgot how many drunks are out at that time.

Its going to be a rough week at work.  I had one quit last week and I have my asst deli manager on vacation.  They have us cut down on hours so much now every day is is an exercise in frustration.  I write a list of what needs to be done.  I try to do the top priorities and as much else as I can, but everyday I know that somethings are not going to get done.  That's with me staying over at least an hour everyday.  I'm just tired and burnt out.

Time to catch things up

OK. I have to go back to work tomorrow.AAAARRRGGGHH!  My surgery went well despite a couple of glitches.  I got poison ivy across my upper chest, up my neck and across my face and on one eye.  One eye was pretty much swollen shut.  I had to call Dr Doepker to make sure that it wouldn't delay my surgery.  He said it was OK since it was above where he was going to work and he gave me a prescription to help get rid of it.  He also gave me a patch to use for the surgery.  It originally is used for people going on cruises to  help with motion sickness.  They are beginning to use to to prevent the sickness some people get from anesthesia.  You place it behind your ear the night before and it lasts for three days.  It didn't help me.  Ive never been that sick before after surgery.  The afternoon after the surgery I took the patch off since it wasn't doing a thing for me.  Later on I couldn't figure out why I was having trouble focusing.  I looked in the mirror and one eye was dilated as big as it could go.  It looked really strange.  I had one eye messed up with poison ivy and one that  looked like something from a horror movie.  I had to call Doepker and he sent me to the ER.  The doctor on duty said that since I didn't have a concussion and I hadn't had a stroke then I must have come in contact with some sort of medication.  Bingo!  I got residue from the patch on my finger and then into my eye.  And the effect would last 3 days.  Oh boy!  But eh surgery did go well.  Doepker is an artist.  This time next year no one will be able to tell these aren't god given.  Even nude. He is good.

Since I couldn't do much work in my garden the past couple of weeks I worked on some sewing and craft projects.  The pillow above has been long overdue.  The front of it is the front of a sweatshirt I used to love.  I wore that thing till it was wore out and the cuffs were fraying.  I just couldn't get rid of it so I cut the front off to make a pillow.  That was close to 30 years ago.  Yeah. This was a sweatshirt from the 80s.  I hauled that fabric around for a long time.  My granddaughter would like to take off with this pillow.

I also worked on this bag.  Its a premade canvas bag from Michaels.  The teal color is spray fabric paint also from Michaels.  The stencil I used is actually a scrap booking paper.    I also use those as stencils on cakes with food coloring airbrush.  Paper doilies also work well for that.

I am also working on this bag.  I liked the peacock design from my cake so well that I decided to embroider it on a black bag using metallic embroidery floss.  When it is done I will never use metallic floss again.  It looks great but it also is a pain to thread and it tangles easily.  I am also doing some bead work on here since I hate doing french knots.

Cake Chick.  This is for you.  I have tried and tried to leave a comment on your blog and never got it to happen.  I don't know if I'm not doing it right or Blogger is having probs.  I wanted to tell you that your cakes look great.  You have a talent for it.  If you lived closer I would hire you to work in my bakery.  One of these days Ill post some pics of some other cakes Ive done.